Alaskan_Son

If it's the extra line in plan view that you're after, consider just giving your foundation walls 2 main layers... All live and auto except for the Auto Detail fills in the elevation view. There are 2 wall fills automatically generated due to the 2 main layers. I just selected them both and clicked polyline union.

Gene, One thing to be aware of is that Chief no longer requires a pony wall to do this. This brick ledge can be automatic for for stemwall foundations now.

Like the guys above said, it takes no time at all to draw a few exterior walls; however, I also recognize that there can be very good reason not to draw unnecessary walls as they can be misguiding if they're not accurate, distracting, and they can just get in the way. A couple things to think about... You don't actually have to enclose a room if you don't want to. Just draw the necessary walls and start dropping cabinets into the plan. Easy peasy. Set the height of the walls by changing the default ceiling height for your current floor or by resizing/reshaping in elevation view. If you want to show a floor and/or a ceiling but don't want all the other walls, use invisible walls for the ones you don't otherwise need. To get rid of the ceiling, just uncheck "Ceiling Over This Room" in the Room Structure tab. Hope that helps.

Rob, It depends on WHAT you're using perspective crop mode for. I don't know of any way to make that setting "stick", however if you're using it for purposes of zooming in on things, you can set "Scene Clipping" numbers down to at or near zero under you General Camera Defaults... This will allow you to zoom in without walls or other surfaces getting cut back, and if you need to zoom with more accuracy, just hold down control while zooming in. If you're needing perspective crop mode for something other than that, sorry...can't help you.

I'm still not back to the office yet Larry, but are you possibly sending your CAD details to layout as images?

No, I wasn't talking about your use of a CAD detail for the site plan. I too think that is a totally legit method well worth considering for anybody. I'm a little surprised when people rip on it. Actually, what I was talking about was what Joe said… Copying the CAD and pasting onto the layout sheet. I'm going to have to check out what you are talking about when I get back to the office though. One of us is definitely missing something though.

Thats a new one to me and prolee why I couldn't see the problem. I don't think I've ever done that. I didn't even know anyone did that.

I must be misunderstanding something. Why can't you simply use one layer set for the first view and another layer set for the second?

You bet. You can assign any hotkeys you want. Those are just one example.

Try using a doorway (no casing or frame...just a hole in the wall) and a symbol for the door and jamb. I'm sure it's not exactly what you would want to see but here's a very quick and rough example. It doesn't actually have the door panel because I just grabbed the first symbol I found and it didn't have a door. You should be able to get the idea though. You would just have to find or make the appropriate symbols and add them to your library. Biggest limitation is that you would probably have to choose whether or not the door was shown open or closed (or it would require 2 different symbols on different layers if you wanted to toggle between the views).

It would help to see more specifically what exactly your situation is such as the shape of the structure, how and where the walls meet, the elevations of your garage floor and stem walls, etc. The best way to accomplish what you're looking for may vary depending on some of the above details.

Okay Chop, I can reproduce your problem now. I missed that we were specifically talking about symbols. I can move everything except symbols in the vertical direction in elevation views with the utmost of accuracy. I guess I hadn't tried moving a symbol like that in X9 until just now. I had tried lines, polylines, etc...just not symbols. Anyway, you are definitely correct. It's broken in X9 and used to work just fine in X8. Thanks for bringing this up and for reporting it.

I'd really be curious to see what's going on with your specific plan. I sent you a PM, but just to give you a little further update, I just tested in X9 and I can easily re-position things in elevation view, and in the vertical direction to within 1/2000 of an inch accuracy. I didn't test any further that that.

Join the roof planes on Floor A and then move roof plane(s) up or down to Floor B and join roof planes on that floor as necessary. Once you're done, simply move roof plane(s) back to their original floor.

I use the tab method as well as the dbx to move items in very small increments on a regular basis. Often times I'll open the dbx and and type "+1/64" or whatever my desired dimension is. What I think you'll find is that you can often move things the desired accuracy but it just doesn't show up in the dbx. It just rounds the number off to the nearest 1/16".

I'm not sure about Joe's system, but at least with my system, it is VERY flexible...its really the whole point of going with a DIY system. You set it up to the way you want it to work. And you don't need to use it for site analysis, it's for AREA analysis...any area. And you can use ANY polyline or even actual room areas. Also, a person could consider using room finish schedules in lieu of or in combination with the above. Those room finish schedules can be very versatile if you set them up specifically for your needs. You can set them to display only the desired rooms or room types, only from the desired floor, and only to include the desired columns. Worth a look though for sure.

Note that most of the suggestions I made in the thread I mentioned above would require very little in the way of any changes on Chief's end. Take a simple line for example...it already has an x and y position right in the dbx. and it can have a label if you add a node which converts it to a polyline. "Show Length" and "Show Angle" as well as callouts and Level Line Markers prove that dual labels aren't too difficult either. Point is that its almost all there already. My point...A whole new tool might be great, but if we could get Chief to provide a few minor things in the interim we could be getting this stuff done. The fact only a very small handful of people ever take the time and energy to champion and support the cause is really making progress slow in some of these areas. PLEASE consider getting behind some of these ideas guys and being a little more vocal with your support and maybe progress will be a little quicker.

This would be possible if Chief just gave us some things I've already requested in the past... Specifically the x and y position attributes and maybe the line labels. ...maybe consider offering a little support.

You are very welcome.

Those should move too if you were to upgrade to X9

No. It shouldn't screw anything up at all unless you've further modified my system to have one of those macros in that text box setting a global value (which is not something I recall ever doing in my videos).

If I am understanding correctly, I would probably recommend you make yourself some different tabulation boxes, reports, or whatever you want to call them. Rather than display a bunch of zero areas, you could simply not display them at all that way. You can have as many of those in your template plan as you need. The only thing you have to avoid doing is accidentally setting the GLOBAL value for any of those areas more than once. You can display those values as many times as you want, you just can't set those values more than once. Does that answer your question?

Hey Scott, 2 quick comments that might help you or others out. The reason labels need to be displayed is because in simple terms, Chief needs to be able to "see" them. You can set the text height to zero, you can set the actual label to display "" (I think I went over this in part 3 of my video series?) or drag the labels off to the side. They just must be visible. I think this is also something I tried to touch on in part 3 of my video series, but the reason you're having problems on the second floor is much the same as the reason labels need to be displayed...Chief needs to be able to "see" those polyline labels you have on the floor below in order to properly calculate them. What's happening when you move to the second floor is that when you open Text Macro Management, every macro is being calculated based on the polyline you have selected. In this case it was that deck area. Normally this is not a problem because once you close TMM, the labels in the polylines will take back over and correct all those numbers immediately. Because all those labels are on the first floor though, Chief can't see them, so the numbers are just reporting based on that deck area you had previously selected. You shouldn't need to cut that polyline and move it to the first floor, all you should need to do is switch your VIEW to the first floor then move back to your second floor. None of this is usually an issue when you print as ALL the macros should be re-executed at that time. It's really only a problem when you open and close TMM or use Insert < because whenever you do either of those things, EVERY macro is executed based on the item you have selected. Chief does this so it knows which ones are valid and which ones aren't. Anyway, all you need to do is "show" those labels to Chief (i.e. make sure they're visible on screen) and all should be well. Hope that helps. P.S. For any of you guys using my system, if I seem to have enough interest I may eventually continue the series to show you how you can cut your required macros in half or even in third and to take you a little deeper into the tricks available in Ruby. I touched on some of the methods required for the above in part 3 of the video series, but there's definitely more than can be done to improve upon the system.

Okay. I found an old .pl1 file and tested out my suggestion. It kinda worked...sorta...not really...Chief tried to open it but then gave this warning... Like you said...looks like those older files are just no longer supported. Oh well....I'm sorry...I tried. On a side note, I'm curious how useful those old files can be anyway. Chief has changed so much it seems like the plans would be a mess and you'd be better off redrawing anyway...although I guess you would still need access to the file to get the relevant information. Looks like keeping X8 on hand for a bit might be the only option. Sorry.